"And did he move?" I asked.
"Oh yes. He went on schedule—with his assistant. I don't know what became of Herman in the exodus. Presumably he moved with them because he turned up in Nevada with Maugham. But I saw no sign of him when I watched Maugham from a distance boarding the train. I suppose Herman could have been taken apart and shipped on ahead. Then he could have been reassembled and set to working again."
"But how do you know Herman went along to Nevada?" I asked, pouring Harrigan yet another drink.
"By one of those ridiculous mistakes the newspapers sometimes make. Maugham hadn't been out west two months before a flash flood tore through the village in which he'd set up housekeeping and inventing. Maugham was one of the victims. The paper nearest there carried a picture of Maugham and his robot, which by that time was public property out there.
"But by one of those odd accidents of the press the names under the pictures had been transposed—under Herman's picture appeared Maugham's name, and under Maugham's Herman's. And to carry the mistake to the epitome of the ludicrous I'm damned if Maugham didn't look exactly like a robot and Herman just like a man!"